Five of the best … films

The Souvenir (15)

A bracing alternative to Julian Fellowes’s green-welly drama of privilege, Joanna Hogg’s films also deal unashamedly with first-world problems – but do so with a cooling level of dispassion that can be an acquired taste. Her latest, and possibly best, stars Honor Swinton Byrne as a film student caught up in a toxic co-dependent relationship with a secretive civil servant (Tom Burke).

Bait (15)

With his fifth feature, British director Mark Jenkin emerges from the shadows with a lo-fi indie that marks him as a talent to watch. Bait’s story of inter-class tensions in gentrified Cornwall might be the currency of any social-issues drama, but Jenkin’s stark style – luminous, distressed monochrome celluloid – adds a strange, hypnotic atmosphere.

Pain and Glory (15)

An in-depth knowledge of Almodóvar’s output helps to make the most of the director’s most autobiographical film to date, but it’s not entirely necessary. It’s perfectly possible to sit back and enjoy one of Antonio Banderas’s best performances, as a once-great director forced to contemplate past lives and loves as he deals with bad health, depression and addiction.

Memory: The Origins of Alien (15)

This deep-dive into the world of Ridley Scott’s haunted-house-in-space movie is not for novices; a passing acquaintance with the 1979 original won’t be enough to keep up with this fast-moving, digressive doc. The making-of story is quickly dispensed with before Philippe turns his attentions to subtext, making fascinating asides on body horror, insect behaviour and class divisions on board the Nostromo.

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (18)

The film that launched a thousand thinkpieces continues to thwart its critics – Tarantino’s ninth film is now the second biggest global hit of his 27-year career. Granted, some of its stamina is due to the inspired casting of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as a Butch and Sundance-style TV star and stuntman combo, who face extinction in 1969’s hippie Hollywood, and Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, poster girl for the flower children.

DW

Five of the best ... rock & pop

Four Tet

More than 20 years into his career, Kieran Hebden, AKA Four Tet, continues to push and pull at dance music’s boundaries. April’s single Teenage Birdsong found him dipping back into the more blissed-out side of his musical experiments, while his recent production work on Neneh Cherry’s Broken Politics album accentuated a darker hue. Expect a proper feast for the senses. Fabric, EC1, Sunday 1 September

L Devine

Pop upstart L Devine (her real name, Olivia Devine, was already taken by a porn star), started her career as a seven-year-old punk in a band called the Safety Pins. Eventually she switched to pop, crafting characterful, first-album-era-Charli XCX-esque bops that touch on homophobia (Daughter), a lack of sex (last single Naked Alone) and peer pressure (er, Peer Pressure). Omeara, SE1, Wednesday 4 September

Serpentwithfeet

Fresh from dueting with Björk every night at her recent New York residency and collaborating with hip-hop rabble Brockhampton, chamber pop experimentalist Josiah Wise recently took a surprising turn by employing the services of will-this-do rent-a-guest Ty Dolla $ign on single Receipts. That the song still fits within Wise’s idiosyncratic musical world is testament to his singular artistry. EartH, N16, Tuesday 3 September

Three of the best ... classical concerts

Bernard Haitink

No conductor of our time has been a more important part of London’s musical scene than Bernard Haitink. He was principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam for more than 25 years, but he was also chief conductor of the London Philharmonic, and then musical director of both Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera, while he has also worked with the London Symphony Orchestra. But Haitink’s concert of Beethoven and Bruckner at the Proms this week with the Vienna Philharmonic will be his last here. At the age of 90, he’s retiring; he’ll be sorely missed. Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Tuesday 3 September

Scoring a Century

One of the finest new British operas of the last half-century was David Blake’s Toussaint in 1977, based on the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture. Blake’s most recent opera, 1999’s Scoring a Century, is being staged in London for the first time by British Youth Opera. With a libretto by Keith Warner, it’s a journey across the 20th century as seen through the eyes of the Jedermanns, a pair of “song and dance merchants”. Warner himself directs, and Lionel Friend conducts. Peacock Theatre, WC2, Saturday 31 August, Wednesday 4, Friday 6 September

Nuages

With works by Szymanowski, Janáček and Tchaikovsky, Ilan Volkov’s programme for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is mostly east European. But he begins with the premiere of Nuages, a Proms commission from Linda Catlin Smith– New York-born but long resident in Canada – whose beautifully conceived, quietly evocative music has gained more and more attention in recent years. Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Sunday 1 September

AC

Five of the best ... exhibitions

Cézanne at the Whitworth

The intellect and contained passion of Cézanne make him a virtually unequalled artist. The late gallerist Karsten Schubert assembled a superb collection of his works on paper, in a career that also saw him support the likes of Rachel Whiteread, and gifted these treasures to the Whitworth. This is a celebration of genius and generosity. The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, to 1 March

Cindy Sherman

The artist whose face is everywhere in her work yet somehow invisible is both an extrovert and introvert. Sherman’s use of disguises to reinvent her very being makes her artistic career since the late-1970s one long masquerade, in which she reveals the unstable and invented nature of the human self. Self-portraiture with a vengeance. National Portrait Gallery, WC2, to 15 September

Ed Ruscha

Pop art and conceptual art were both born in the 1960s and were never far apart, as the long, provocative career of Ed Ruscha proves. Ruscha’s paintings are both masterpieces of deadpan contemporary observation and eerie philosophical questions that echo the surrealist humour of Magritte. This rich Artist Rooms display of his work ranges from book works and text paintings to his 2017 canvas Our Flag, which portrays the stars and stripes torn to shreds. Tate Modern, SE1, to 1 July

George Stubbs

The great 18th-century British painter George Stubbs was no stranger to Newmarket – some of his most perfect equine portraits are set on the flat expanse of its racecourse. Stubbs’s horses are so real they are surreal, but, as this exhibition shows, he was infinitely more than a sporting artist. He got his knowledge of horses by dissecting them, and his studies of their anatomy are the most beautiful scientific drawings since Leonardo’s. Palace House, Newmarket, to 28 September

Keith Haring

Pop art was reborn in 80s New York with a new taste of street and club life, and Andy Warhol played godfather to younger artists who emulated his eye for the way we live now. Keith Haring combined cartoon techniques with the scale of painting to celebrate diversity and energy. His blocky style has arguably been more influential on TV animation than it has on the art scene, so it’s nice to see him back in the gallery. Tate Liverpool, to 10 November

JJ

Five of the best ... theatre shows

The Son

French playwright Florian Zeller continues his triumphant takeover of the London theatre scene. The Son (in a translation by Christopher Hampton) is the final play in Zeller’s trilogy of intense domestic dramas and tackles divorce, depression and teenage life. Amanda Abbington, Laurie Kynaston, John Light and Amaka Okafor are directed by the always-astute Michael Longhurst. The Duke of York’s, WC2,to 2 November

Typical

Ryan Calais Cameron’s poetic and impassioned monologue draws on the death of Christopher Alder, an ex-serviceman assaulted during a night out in 1998, who was arrested and then died in police custody. Richard Blackwood stars in a stripped-back show that lets the facts speak for themselves. Directed by Anastasia Osei-Kuffour with unflinching purpose. Soho Theatre: Upstairs, W1, Tuesday 3 to 28 September

Hedda Tessman

The feminist classics are flooding the theatre scene at the moment, but this creative team is particularly tantalising. With Haydn Gwynne in the title role, Henrik Ibsen’s classic play about a cosseted housewife finally breaking free is adapted by Cordelia Lynn, a writer with real vision, and the show is spearheaded by Headlong Theatre alongside Chichester Festival Theatre and the Lowry. They’re bound to create a production that feels charged, unpredictable and undeniably new. Chichester Festival Theatre: Minerva Theatre, to 28 September

Chiaroscuro

Director Lynette Linton is on a brilliant run right now, following an excellent take on Lynn Nottage’s Sweat at the Donmar and Gielgud. She kicks off her role as artistic director at the Bush with a revival of poet and Scottish makar Jackie Kay’s 1986 play. The work is set at a dinner party but is a far from conventional exploration of queer and black identity, being part play, part gig, and part spoken word. The Bush Theatre, W12, Saturday 31 August to 5 October

Two Trains Running

Pittsburgh 1969. There’s a controversial new president in the White House, and racial tensions are on the rise. American writer August Wilson’s play focuses on a diner under threat of demolition and paints a vivid portrait of everyday lives at a crossroads. Two Trains Running picked up Tony awards on its Broadway debut in 1992 but is not well-known over here. Nancy Medina directs this major revival. Royal & Derngate: The Royal, Northampton, Saturday 31 August, touring to 26 October

MG

Three of the best ... dance shows

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

The Ailey company is a troupe that reliably brings joy and soul to the stage, as well as badass technique. The New Yorkers offer three different programmes packed with exciting new work, including Rennie Harris’s two-act Lazarus. Plus, as always, every night ends with the classic Revelations, the most-watched piece of contemporary dance ever. Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Wednesday 4 to 14 September

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